Discovering Tyria: The Magumma Jungle

My name’s Devin M. (Xerelin). I’m a new writer on staff here at GuildWars2Junkies. I’ve been brought on board here to bring everyone a new weekly column called, “Discovering Tyria”. The idea behind it will be to go into detail about certain aspects of the game such as lore, the elder dragons, minigames and puzzles, and the three orders players can choose in the game. I’ll start off the new column this week with an introduction of myself and then move on to one of the lesser known areas in the game, the Maguuma Jungle.

The Brisban Wildlands (a zone in the Maguuma Jungle)

I’ve not been around too long in the media scene, but I’ve played Guild Wars 1 for years, and still have an active guild there with “House Fexdrion”. You’ll recognize me from over on Guildwars Insider by my name, “Xerelin”. I write the community spotlight column for them every Tuesday morning and take care of their internal systems. I’m hugely hyped up for Guild Wars 2 and have spent my time in both BWE’s rampaging through the content. I dabble in PvP and WvW, but my two-year old plays it better than me (not joking), so I’ll be staying away from writing about those aspects because I’m a far cry from the expert. Although, next BWE I will make sure I put together some footage of me trying PvP out. It’ll make for some good laughs and quite a few bloopers. So, now that we all know a little about me, lets find out a little about the Maguuma Jungle.

The Maguuma Jungle is the region on the west side of the mainland continent of Tyria. It is a massive jungle area in the south and an arid desert to the north of the region (Although the desert is still considered part of the jungle). The southern areas such as the Tarnished Coast is the surface homeland of the diminuitive Asuran race and their mighty floating capital of Rata Sum. The determination and ingenuity of these small asura is evidenced by the location of their capital. The Tarnished Coast boasts quite a hostile environment outside the city. 250 years in the past there was quite a large population of Krait and shamanistic Simian’s that attacked any traveller’s they saw on sight. This coupled with the appearance of the Destroyers put the area around Rata Sum near the top of the “Tyria’s Most Dangerous Regions” list.

Just to the northeast of the Tarnished coast area past the Metrica Province is the Caledon Forest which borders the home of the Sylvari, The Grove. Unlike the other races, Asura and Sylvari players will “bump” into each other much earlier because of the relative proximity of these two cities, but don’t think that will dilute the content in the area. The Caledon Forest is kind of a melting pot of different environments. There’s coastal, desert, jungle, and plains biomes here. The Human players can get to this area from the south exit from Kessex Hills, and thus all three races collide here and push north into the Maguuma Wastes to take on the servants of Primordius, the Destroyers.

The northern area of the Maguuma Jungle is referred to as the Maguuma Wastes due to it’s arid environment. The theory most asura and sylvari have is that the land has dried up and died because of the proximity of Primordius in the region. While the Asura have a history of fighting the destroyers dating back hundreds of years, the Sylvari are new on the scene and even still have come to have a respect for the might of the destroyers. The threat from the south from Zhaitan and the north from Primordius so close to home really bring it home on how these cities are small bastions in a dangerous land. Travelers to the Maguuma Jungle beware, and bring a good helmet.

That’s all for my overview of the Maguuma Jungle. Hopefully it was interesting enough to make everyone forget the horrible introduction I wrote for myself. Next week in the Discovering Tyria column I’m going to start in on a three part series about the Orders that players can choose to join in Guild Wars 2 starting with “The Vigil.” I figured it’d be appropriate since everyone who got to explore the new Gendarran Fields zone in the recent BWE couldn’t miss the massive Vigil Keep in the north central part of the zone. That place just looks too cool to pass up.

If you have an idea or suggestion for something you want to see in a future episode of Discovering Tyria, be sure to bring it up in the forums.